Emily Turns 10

Well, my girl turned 10. She is a whole decade old and I have officially been a mom for a decade! It makes me feel so old, even though I am only 30! She has grown so much and has developed into such an amazing young lady. This year was the first year she didn't have a complete meltdown with all of the activity going on for her birthday. She usually gets herself so worked up and then has a complete meltdown towards the end of the evening. We had a family birthday party at our house with my mom and then we all went to Emily and Quinn's winter concert, which I will have to post the video of at a later time. Emily has such an amazing voice and she doesn't even know it. So many people came up to me after the concert to tell me how amazing she was (she had a solo.)
I am such a lucky woman to have been blessed with this sweet girl. She has seriously made me the woman I am today. She has my stubborn attitude and independence. She loves with her whole heart and is so caring. It is so much fun watching her grow up, I just wish she would slow down a little bit...

Arizona

For vacation this year, Greg was so sweet and let me choose where to go. I have been missing one of very best friends, who moved to Arizona. Plus, I had never been to Arizona! We got to stay in Scottsdale in a nice hotel. Greg loved it because it was across the parking lot from a restaurant called, "Lo Lo's Chicken and Waffles." Soul food...probably his favorite! We only had 3 full days there, as it was the week of Thanksgiving and we wanted to get back to the kids. It was a rushed trip, but it was so nice for me not to have any responsibilities, even if it was just for 3 days. Arizona is so beautiful...not Oregon beautiful, but in a unique way. We got to tour Old Town, which was probably my favorite part of the whole trip.
Valuable lesson learned: NEVER EVER TRAVEL the day before Thanksgiving. We landed back at PDX around 4:30pm. 2 hours later, we arrived at Greg's parents house in Vancouver!! What should have been a 15 minute drive took 2 hours. Greg's dad was so sweet and drove down to the beach to get our kids and bring them back up to Vancouver to meet us. We were staying in Vancouver for Thanksgiving. It took his poor dad 4 hours and 10 minutes to drive from our house to Vancouver. Normally a 2 hour drive. We learned a lot that day!